Shadows Rising
by Inferna Firesword
Summary: Even as the Bixby Midnighters wait for the blue time to come in NYC, they are unaware that a new generation has already found them, and they know more than they expect . . . Rated T for safety and romance. Story is WAY better than summery.
1. Prolouge

**Author's Note: **This story is based off of an RPG that I played in BZP's Completely Off-Topic forum, called Darkness Rising. The game folded before it could shape up to anything, so I went and made the story larger. The characters you recognize belong to Scott Westerfeld. The other characters belong to the players that created them; I'll perform their individual disclaimers as they are introduced.

But enough of my rambling.

Prologue

The Hudson River wound, cutting the land in half. It eventually joined the Atlantic Ocean, opening its maw to a bite out of the watery apple that was that massive body of salty liquid. And floating on the island near the junction area . . .

New York City. Manhattan. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps.

_Or, _thought Melissa, _it never slept until now._

The Mindcaster sat in the shotgun position of Jonathan's car, her lancing tape playing. True, she had control now in mind-loud areas, after Madeline had touched her, but this wasn't the Tusla mall they were going to. This was a huge city full of mind-noise, and there was no such thing as not being too careful.

Beside her, Jonathan was at the wheel. His tension might have been because of the agonizing traffic or the message that Rex had sent them recently, but her powers told her everything that he was thinking.

He wanted the Blue Time to come again, come and release him from the Earth's gravity. Free him . . . and free Jessica again too.

Melissa sighed and addressed him sharply. "Eyes on the road, Flyboy. I don't want to slam into something just because you were thinking about Jess again."

Jonathan jolted in his seat, like he had been half-asleep, and then a guilty look appeared on his face again like always when he was reminded of the state the Flame-Bringer was in. Classic survivor's guilt. Always blaming himself for what had happened during Samhain, and no amount of reassurances from Jessica Day herself would make it ebb.

"Right," he said hastily. "New York's the destination, right?"

"Yeah. Rex said there's something up with the darklings back in Bixby last time he contacted us. New York's the perfect place to find new recruits."

"Well, we better get there soon," the Acrobat replied, speeding up as the traffic thinned and he could reach the speed limit.

They continued on to a city filled with people, and quite a few awakening Midnighters.


	2. Watchers

Watchers

Jonathan was the one that stated the obvious question. They had left the car in the communal street parking, with a well-fed meter sitting beside it. They didn't have as much money as they might've had before, but it was enough to keep the car there until they returned to wait out the last few seconds until the Secret Hour came. Now, he and Melissa were wandering the crowded, loud, streets, he acutely missing his lower gravity and Jess as usual.

After about ten minutes of walking down random streets, he finally opened his mouth and asked.

"How are we gonna find them?"

He wasn't sure if the Mindcaster had heard him at first: she had the usual pained expression she wore when there was a lot of mind noise swamping her head, and the headphones were on, so he couldn't tell if she had heard either the mental or vocal versions of his question.

However, after about a minute after the question had been tossed out in the open, Melissa finally replied. "None of the other places that we were at had many Midnighters, and none of them Seers. We can't find them by sight, so we do the same thing we've been doing everywhere else: feel for their minds at midnight."

"What if there's no one here?" Jonathan asked anxiously as they passed a Mercedes that wouldn't have been out of place in the garage of the Greyfoots.

Truth be told, this had been nagging at him for a long time now. At all the towns and cities they had had few Midnighters, if any – and more often than not, there were none. And as town after town went by, his fear of that happening here increased.

"Dess said that there would be about 100 Midnighters here in the city, Flyboy. She hasn't been wrong before."

XxX

The driver of the Mercedes was bored, to put it mildly. Until the blue time came, there was nothing of real importance to do, and even when that came, there was no Lore, only the "words" of Ari.

Even as he came out of the store that his car was parked in front of, he caught a flash of . . . something . . . and turned his head so he was looking down the street. Two people, marked so heavily with Focus that they stood out amongst the masses of daylighters.

What were they? Had the darklings and slithers marked them and made them so bright? Or were they others like him and the rest?

Frowning behind his sunglasses even as the wind tousled his blonde hair, he diverted his path and followed them, staying close enough that he could see them, but if they looked back he would just look like another pedestrian.

Even as he tailed them, he noted the Focus around them – a boy and a girl, both in their late teens – was strong. If it had been darklings, they must've rubbed all over them. However, the things he was seeing were too strong to be simply darkling. This was natural Focus, coming off of Midnighters.

And the strange thing was this: he had no idea who they were. He had never met them, or known of them being here.

Frowning, he ducked back. Something was up. He had to meet up with some of the others, loathe as he was to admit it. They could think of something to explain them, or figure out if they were the other Midnighters Ari had been telling them about. Turning his feet to match his new direction, he walked back to his car, got it, and took off as fast as the traffic and the speed limit would allow him.

XxX

Sure enough, once he entered the library parking lot, he knew at least two of the others were there – the car enthusiasts that were drooling over the black Ferrari Enzo and the dark blue 911 Porsche Turbo on the far end of the asphalt were enough to convince him. Shaking his head as he pulled in close by – none of the goggling people noticed – he wondered why they went anywhere in those stand-outs, then rejected the thought just as fast as it had appeared. One of them just really liked expensive cars, and one had gotten it for a birthday gift two years prior. In either instance, there was little chance in them getting new ones.

As he walked through the doors of the library, three Focused people came into his eyesight: one sprawled in a leather chair reading, another shelving books, and the third helping out the one doing the shelving. However, the latter seemed to paying equal attention to the shelving girl herself as he was the books, which was causing her to become slightly flustered.

The Seer ignored this, and simply walked straight up to the girl, knowing that she was the one to inform first. The boy – whom he noticed had still neglected to shave, despite the desperate need he was in for that – turned his head sharply towards him when he picked up on his thoughts, eyes surprised. He quickly touched the girl's bare forearm, and she rapidly looked around, and started as she spotted him. And why not? He hardly came in here.

"What is it, Chris?" the girl asked, her voice low, her blue eyes behind her sunglasses glinting seriously.

"I found two more. They aren't from here; I've never seen them."

The girl frowned, somehow still looking as pretty as she always did when she wasn't presented with something she couldn't figure out. She glanced at her companion, all tense feelings gone, and he closed his red-flecked green eyes to concentrate. Out of the corner of his eye, Chris saw Joel leave his chair and walk over, summoned by a mental message from Jake.

"What is it?" Joel asked in a low tone of voice – this was a library after all.

"Two more of us. Chris spotted them; he didn't recognize them," Jake butted in, which resulted in a glare from the Seer.

"What are they?" Joel asked.

"I'm not sure. We can't be sure until we catch up to them during the Secret Hour and we can see them," Lauren replied. A glint appeared in her eyes, the one that Chris hated to see. "We should get the rest of us together and try to figure out the best course of action. Same place, tonight?"

"Sounds good," Jake said enthusiastically, backing her up as usual. Chris gritted his teeth. One thing that _he_ discovered, and already Lauren Swann was turning it into a group affair.

Still, he pushed the feeling down as Lauren continued. "I'll track down Noah and Kang after my shift is up, and I'll get Anthony too. Joel, you should probably find Kit and Mai. Jake should find Stephan, and Chris, can you get Caspian?"

The three other Manhattan Midnighters nodded as Lauren listed off the other members of their group. Since the city was huge, and they didn't want to reveal their presence just yet to these new Midnighters until they were able to decide on how to do so, they had to make sure they were all able to get the message.

"Just what is going on here?"

Slowly, the group of teens turned around to see Lauren's white-haired boss, Ms. Wintrope, glowering down at them from behind her half-moon glasses. She had a bad temper when her younger employees were slacking on the job or talking to friends when they should be working, along with having – as Lauren and Jake had begun to suspect – a cruel sense of humor. Joel had once questioned Chris if she was a Mindcaster like some of the others were after hearing the Mindcaster and the Acrobat complain about some of the instances when they had begun to suspect that, but a quick Focus scan had confirmed that she was simply a daylighter.

"My friends just wanted to remind me of something we're doing after my shift's up," Lauren said quickly, her eyes pulling off her classic "good-girl" appearance. "They were just about to leave, right guys?" she continued even as she cued them to follow her lead with her eyes.

"Yeah, that's right," Jake chimed in, taking his cue from the female Midnighter. Chris realized with some irritation that she had said that to get them moving on finding the others, and thus make the meeting inevitable. _I really hate it when she does that._

"Well, be off, then!" the white-haired woman said with an irritated look that harbored no argument. "Lauren, when you're done shelving, I need you up at the desk."

The Acrobat shot an apologetic look over her shoulder as she got back to work and her boss stalked off. "Better scram, before she gets back," she mouthed over at them. Knowing full well what they might be in for if Ms. Winthrope caught them here still distracting her, the three of them took off, looking for the other Midnighters. Only Jake glanced back at her.


	3. Gathering

Gathering

Luckily for Lauren, she didn't need to track down one of her fellow Acrobats – he came to her.

Just before her shift was going to end, Noah walked in, looking like he had just gone in for a book. He looked around, spotted the other Midnighter pushing a cart back behind the desk, and approached her nonchalantly. "Lauren, think you could help me?" he murmured, confirming her suspicions that he hadn't come in because he had learned from one of the others; he was just after a book.

"Yeah, what are you looking for?" she replied. She listened carefully while he described what he was looking for, then nodded and began leading him towards the section he was after. "I'm pretty sure it was put back on the shelf this morning . . . by the way, Noah?"

"Yeah?" the other Acrobat asked, sounding the same as always. Clearly had no idea about the upcoming secret Midnighters meeting that night.

"Chris spotted two others earlier this afternoon. They're not one of us. We're all meeting up at the clubhouse tonight."

Noah listened, than nodded. "I'll be there."

"Good." With that, she plucked the book off the shelf that the other Acrobat had been looking for and handed it to him, smiling. He took it and went back to the desk to check it out, while she went to retrieve her purse and leave the library to find Kang.

The drooling car lovers that had been all over Joel's Ferrari were gone, but she still had a few people to avoid when she backed her Porsche out of the lot. Growling under her breath, she briefly toyed with the idea of getting Jake to "fix" them, if only so she didn't have to run the risk of nearly killing someone every time she left work.

Pulling out and into the street, she went off to find the others.

XxX

It wasn't hard for Joel to find Mai – he was walking right out of his school when the Polymath pulled up in the streets in front of it. The Chinese-American recognized his ride right off the bat – who wouldn't? – and at Joel's urging, slipped into shotgun.

"Thanks for the lift," he said, dumping his backpack into the backseat and slouching backwards in the chair.

"Hard day?" the older boy suggested sarcastically, even as the Mindcaster reached back and fumbled around in his bag, looking for the medicine that he kept in there. Joel had always had a hard time understanding the pain that Mai, Jake, Caspian, and Anthony always had to deal with because of their powers, partly because he thought that it would make it easier in life to be able to read minds.

"Tell me about it. Had to deal with five teenage dating dramas that I couldn't tune out, _and _had to resist probing into the resident genius's head for the test answers," he replied, popping an aspirin into his mouth and swallowing, making a face at the bland flavor of the pill. "Can't wait for the blue time."

"Speaking of which," Joel said, pulling away from the curb and starting to cruise through the traffic of the mid-afternoon, "we're meeting up tonight at the regular place. Chris found others that he doesn't recognize. He thinks that they might be the ones from Bixby that Ari's told us about."

Mai was quiet for a few minutes, than said softly, while they were waiting at a red light, "And Lauren told you to find me and Kit and pass on the message, right?"

"Right."

The younger boy closed his eyes for a few seconds, then said slowly, "I'm not sure, but I _think_ Kit's in the store ahead, buying more metal stuff for weapons."

"Let's check it out," the Polymath said, pulling over into an empty space and parking. He stepped out with Mai, and made double sure that the car was locked. Last thing he wanted was to get the car stolen again.

XxX

Finding Stephan after his latest, unsuccessful, job hunt wasn't easy. The Flamebringer was rather gloomy over it, but in the end his distinct taste made him stand out from the daylighters that surrounded him in the middle of Times Square.

Jake raced across the crosswalk towards the other Midnighter and firmly gripped his bare wrist. Stephan's eyes widened as the mental tide flowed between them, then relaxed and nodded as Jake hurried off. The whole exchange had taken less than a minute to transact.

XxX

While driving towards the place Kang took karate lessons after school, Lauren was quick to pull out her cell phone in a red light, ignoring the danger, and phoned Anthony's private line. His music store tended to always have a busy line, so she had to call him by his own cell instead.

"Hello?"

Good, so he had his phone. "Anthony, it's Lauren. We're meeting up tonight at the usual time at our usual hangout. Can you make it?"

The "usual time" was the start of the blue time, or as close as the Midnighters could make it. The "usual hangout" was the special area that Lauren and Chris had helped gain after Kit and Joel had mapped the areas in the Manhattan during the blue time, with some help from Ari.

"Yeah, of course I can."

"Good." And as the light turned green, Lauren hung up.

XxX

Kit was looking at a large necklace, with links of metal that numbered 13 times 13 (otherwise known as _169_) when the other Polymath of their small band of Midnighters tapped him casually on the shoulder. When he pretended to ignore it, Joel got impatient and poked him several more times in the same area before Kit finally decided to hear out Joel, if only to get him to stop. He turned around to find Mai was with them, standing rather awkwardly close to the door.

"What is it, Joel?" Kit said impatiently, one hand on the display case for the necklace. Idly, he was wondering if he had enough money to buy it; it would be nice to give Lauren a break from supplying the Polymaths with their metal supplies.

"Lauren's called a meeting. Same time, same place, tonight." And with that, Joel turned and dragged Mai outside, back into his Ferrari, and away. Shaking his head, Kit went back to examining the metal.

XxX

It was hard for Chris, even for someone with his high-standing pedigree, to get inside the place that Caspian worked. He doubted that the older Mindcaster would come to their meeting – he usually didn't – but it was worth leaving a note for him in his mailbox at his place, and hope that he actually heeded their wish to join them.

XxX

Lauren waited quietly, her leather boots off, for Kang to show up after class. Even after a few weeks of knowing the other Acrobat, he was still too shy to tell her if he taught the class or was a student.

Finally, people began streaming out, and she went against the tide and walked into the classroom. Kang was there, helping clean up. He looked up, and rapidly blushed when he saw her standing in the doorway. She quickly made motions to meet him outside once he was done, and after he hastily nodded and ducked his head down again, she went back outside to wait him out.

About five minutes later, he came out, shyly approaching her. She had wondered why he had gradually warmed up to the likes of Joel and Mai but still remained shy around her, until Jake had informed her that he was really shy around girls that he thought were beautiful. Since, she had made a point of interacting with the Korean-American as much as possible without hurting Jake's feelings.

"Kang," she said, smiling at him, and he rapidly blushed again – his blood levels changed quite a bit with her around. "Kang, we're meeting up at in the contortion tonight, during the usual time. You coming?"

After a few seconds thought, Kang agreed to come. Smiling – which garnered another blush – Lauren turned and headed back to retrieve her shoes and get back to her car.

She still had parental units to deal with, after all.

XxX

Lauren – Inferna Firesword (aka Yours Truly)

Jake – Rockhound

Joel – Akaku: Master of the Winds

Mai – Hewkiinuva

Kang – Taka-Kun

Noah – Kagha

Ari – Toa of Awesomeness

Anthony – (. . . I completely forget his name xD)

Caspian – King of the Vahki

Chris – Toa of Awesomeness

Kit – The Power that Is


End file.
